With the click of a button and the whirl of some fans, Auburn University’s new $1 million supercomputer was officially in operation.
President Jay Gogue and Provost Timothy Boosinger ceremoniously turned on the supercomputer in front of an audience of researchers and media at the Information Technology Building on Thursday, Feb. 4.
The new supercomputer, nicknamed “Hopper” after famed computer scientist Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, is a collection of 120 computers networked together to act as a single system. Its speeds to access data rank in the top 1 percent in the world, according to a University press release.
Nicholas Giordano, dean of the College of Sciences and Mathematics, said the supercomputer makes the University an attractive place for new faculty.
“Having direct access to this new supercomputer will have a tremendous impact on researchers at Auburn University,” Giordano said.
The supercomputer has more than 16 terabytes of memory and 1.4 petabytes of disk space, according to the press release. The size of the disk space is equivalent to 87,500 iPhones with 16 gigabytes of memory.
“Hopper” runs a Linux-based operating system common in the research world and will be used for various research projects, including process genetic data.
Rita Graze, professor in biological sciences, said the supercomputer was a necessity to genetic research.
“Our data sets are so large that if you tried to do that on your laptop or your desktop, there’s not enough power,” Graze said. “It would grind to a halt.”
Each networked computer has 20 cores that can process data, tied together that's 2,400 cores.
“You’re talking about going from not being able to do something at all to being able to do it in an hour, two hours, maybe a day,” Graze said.
Bliss Bailey, interim chief information officer, said the supercomputer runs on approximately 240 amps.
“That’s a lot of power,” Bailey said.
Several air conditioning systems work to keep the computer cool to handle the heat from the computer.
“We designed this building from the ground up to manage that heat very efficiently,” Bailey said.
“Hopper” is the second supercomputer on campus. Another supercomputer was installed three years ago in the Hubbard Center for Advanced Science, Innovation and Commerce, but “Hopper” is four times faster, according to the University’s press release.
“We are now in the era of big data and big computing,” Giordano said.
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